Electronic cigarettes are becoming a popular alternative to tobacco smoking because of the many advantages that they offer. One of the main reasons that they are popular is due to their similarities to tobacco smoking. In fact, the closer that they are in providing the experience of a traditional cigarette, the more likely they are to be accepted in the market place.
An electronic cigarette typically comprises a battery, an atomizer, a container of smoke juice, a heating element and a power control circuit. The battery is used to power the circuit and the atomizer, where the atomizer heats the smoke juice to create smoke or vapor, which is inhaled by a user.
One example of an electronic cigarette (hereinafter an “Electronic Cigarette” or “E-cigarette”) is a “two-piece” device having a first battery section and a second atomizer section, wherein the atomizer section is detachable from the battery section.
An example of one such Electronic Cigarette is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. In some embodiments, the battery section B contains a power cell, an airflow sensor, and a chipset (hereinafter referred to as, the Battery). In some embodiments, the atomizer section A contains a heating element and a container of “smoke juice” which comprises flavorings and a vaporizing base, such as glycol (hereinafter referred to as a “Cartomizer”). Typically, the Battery and Cartomizer are physically and electrically connected by a threaded engagement. In some embodiments, the Battery has the “male” threaded portion and the Cartomizer has the “female” threaded portion, as shown in FIG. 2.
In the beginning stages of development of the Electronic Cigarette, it was natural to copy the air flow and to mimic its path similar to the way it behaves in a traditional cigarette. In a tobacco cigarette, air enters the tip, which collects the smoke and enters the smoker's mouth through the “filter.” Likewise, early E-cigarettes had one or more notches at the tip of the Battery to allow air intake. Air would enter from the tip, pass through the entire Battery, and continue through the Cartomizer, the vapor-producing portion of the E-cigarette, and enter the smoker's mouth via the distal end of the Cartomizer, which functions as a mouth piece.
A cross-section of an example of this arrangement can be seen in FIG. 3. As shown in FIG. 3, when air 104 is inhaled through the mouthpiece 100, air enters the tip of the cigarette, travels past an air flow sensor 102 through the spaces provided around the sensor 102, and continues past the battery B (in this case a lithium cell.) It then goes through the opening in the axis of a post engaged with the Battery's male connector 106, and straight into a post 108 engaged to the female connector of the Cartomizer. The air is then inundated with atomized particles of liquid vapor and exits through the mouthpiece of the Cartomizer into the smoker's mouth.
Heretofore, there has often been a specific problem with tip-intake Electronic Cigarettes that the present invention aims to eliminate. When the smoker exhales into a tip-intake battery Electronic Cigarette (as smokers often do), the vapors 104A from the mouth follow the reverse of the path described above—they flow inside the Battery towards the sensor and often condense causing the sensor to become clogged and fail. The exhalation likewise causes excess liquid in the Cartomizer to follow the same path into the Battery part towards the sensor, clogging it further and also causing it to fail. This also causes major difficulties in mass-production in terms of maintaining consistent air flow and consistent sensitivity of the sensor from one Electronic Cigarette to the next.
Therefore it is desirable to avoid bringing the intake air through the entire length of the Battery through its rear tip (hereinafter “Tip-Intake”), and instead to bring it in through its front side (hereinafter “Side-Intake”), at the point where the Battery and Cartomizer sections meet.
However, it was always perceived as a necessity for the female threaded portion of the Cartomizer to have air slits at its edges when used in conjunction with a Side Intake Battery, because it was otherwise difficult to mass-produce machined male threads that allow air intake at its base. As a result, if it was desirable to change the design of the E-cigarette from the Tip-Intake type to the Side-Intake type, one would necessarily need to modify the female portion of the E-cigarette, i.e. the Cartomizer. Therefore, if it was desirable to make slits on the Battery section of the E-cigarette, one would need to redesign the entire E-cigarette so that the Battery section would be the female threaded portion and the Cartomizer section would be the male threaded portion. Additionally, one could never offer an option of interchanging the male Battery section between the Tip-Intake type with the Side-Intake type, while maintaining compatibility with the same female portion, since in the latter, the female Cartomizer would require slits at the engagement point, whereas in the former, the female Cartomizer could not have slits, otherwise the resulting airflow through the E-cigarette would be too great.
Accordingly, implementation of a Side-Intake Electronic Cigarette has, until the present invention, been considered an expensive and complicated proposition which would, by necessity, require redesign of all parts of the device and eliminate the possibility of backwards-compatibility of the majority of internal parts of the device.